Uncovering dental embezzlement: A cautionary tale and behind-the-scenes look

How did an investigator uncover more than $240,000 of embezzlement from a Texas dental practice? DrBicuspid has the inside story from the woman who led the case and helped put the perpetrator behind bars.

Wendy AskinsWendy Askins.

In this episode, I spoke with Wendy Askins from Prosperident about a significant case of embezzlement in a South Texas dental practice. You can read about the case and outcome. She discussed the warning signs that led to the discovery of the theft, the importance of conducting thorough background checks on employees, and the emotional toll that such crimes take on business owners.

Askins shared insights on how to prevent embezzlement and the critical role of forensic auditing in uncovering financial misconduct. The conversation emphasizes the need for vigilance and verification in managing dental practices.

My sincere thanks to Askins for taking the time to speak to me and David Harris of Prosperident for being willing to give our readers this behind-the-scenes look.


Podcast takeaways

  • The doctor noticed unauthorized refund transactions on his merchant statement.
  • Conducting employee background checks is essential to prevent theft.
  • The embezzler had a history of theft from previous employers.
  • Embezzlement often goes unnoticed until significant damage is done.
  • It's crucial to verify that collected revenue matches bank deposits.
  • Trusting employees without verification can lead to financial loss.
  • Embezzlement is a personal crime that affects the victim emotionally.
  • Working behind the scenes can help uncover financial misconduct.
  • Practices should always check references before hiring new employees.
  • Reaching out to professionals can provide necessary support in suspicious situations.

Podcast chapters

(00:00) -- Introduction to the case
(02:44) -- The discovery of embezzlement
(05:41) -- The Importance of doing background checks
(08:33) -- Working behind the scenes
(11:34) -- Lessons learned from the case
(13:28) -- The emotional impact of embezzlement
(16:22) -- Conclusion and Call to action

Podcast transcript

Kevin Henry: "Hey everybody, welcome back into another edition of 'The DrBicuspid.com Podcast.' My name is Kevin Henry, the editor in chief for DrBicuspid. Excited today to be talking about a very interesting subject and get a little behind-the-scenes look at a story that we ran earlier this year about a case in South Texas that was broken by Prosperident. And that is where we bring in Wendy Askins. Hey Wendy, how are you?

Wendy Askins: "Hi, Kevin. Thank you so much for having me and allowing me to share the details of this case. They're so interesting.

Henry: "I'm glad to have you on because I think our audience needs to hear some things that tipped you off and tipped off the doctor to that this case was going on. And we'll get into that in just a minute. But before we do that, just tell our audience a little bit about you and a little bit about your background.

Askins: "OK, well, I have somewhere around 35 years' experience in dentistry, and I have been fortunate enough to be with Prosperident for the past 13 years. So I am a supervising examiner, and I do forensic auditing, catching criminals through financial transactions and like with the current case we're gonna talk about. It's very rewarding to see it come to fruition and to see justice obtained for my clients.

Henry: "And we're going to link to the article. We ran this on January 20th of this year. And it was talking about a woman who was accused of embezzling more than $240,000 from a dental practice in the state of Texas. So, Wendy, I'm just going to ask you and start with a very high-level question here. What tipped the doctor off that something was actually going on in his practice?

Askins: "Well, you know what has always been really interesting to me about this practice is that this particular owner and his wife did everything that generally we tell people to do when they're reviewing their practice. He looked at the day sheet on a daily basis. He did reconciliation of the revenue collected in the practice management system with his bank statement. He was religious about doing that. But something happened one day, and it's really interesting. It was like the 4th of July. So it was a holiday. And he was just sitting at the table that morning with his wife having some coffee. And he thought he'd look at his merchant statement and his bank statement. So, you know, the bank statement will give you an overview or kind of a gross amount of what is deposited into your account. But it doesn't give you those minute details that you need to pay attention to.

"So he thought, well, I'm going look at my merchant statement. So he gets it out. He, he looks over it and he saw quite a few refund transactions that he knew he hadn't authorized. And he had a very specific written process in his office where he reviewed every single refund transaction that was submitted to him. That's how informed of a business owner he was. But then he looked at this merchant statement and he was like, yikes, I don't know what that is. So he called Prosperity, and he just began telling me what he saw and he knew it wasn't right. Even though he couldn't work out the details of what was happening, he just knew it wasn't right. And so we picked it up from there.

Henry: "And again, this was a longtime employee of his practice, correct?

Askins: "About 18 months.

Henry: "OK. All right.

Askins: "18 months. Yeah, that's a lot of money over 18 months.

Henry:  "I'm so excited. I just got to tell you that. One thing we always want to talk about, and I'm sure your audience members want to know and learn is the lessons that we can learn from this one particular case. To me, one of the things in this case that is so magnified is doing employee background checks and calling previous references, because this employee came to this practice. The wife was currently the office manager, but she needed some help. So his wife went on a very popular employee-matching site specifically for our industry and found this person that had a beautiful resume, had all kinds of experience in the software that they were running in their practice. So she hired her.

Askins: "It didn't come up until later until we started having some conversations that we found out that the wife thought that this particular website that she was using was doing background checks. So she felt that it wasn't necessary for her to do it. And so she didn't. OK. Keep that, keep that in mind real quick, because I'm going to go a little bit further.

"When this case came about and Prosperident ran her background for our client, we had discovered that she had been arrested five separate times for theft from dental practices. OK, hold on, because it gets better. So after this employee left my client's office, she went to another dental office down the street, if you can believe it. And she was there for six months, and she stole $25,000. It wasn't until the second doctor figured out that something was going on. Then he decided to call my first client and say, 'Hey, what was happening with this employee?' So he never got a reference either. And believe it or not, it happened a third time.

Henry: "My goodness. I'm sorry to keep interrupting you. I love this case. There's so much to learn from it. So when the Secret Service did a subpoena of her bank account, they actually found checks from the past three employers, which all could have been stopped if the first person would have done a background check or if they would have called previous employers for reference. Isn't it astounding?

Askins: "It is. And I guess that's such a huge lesson with the hiring crisis that's going on. And so often dental practices want to hire somebody that's just got a heartbeat to fill that position and they don't do that critical thing. So is that a moral, not the, but a moral to the story, that it's always about background checks, it's always about calling those references to make sure that something isn't already a red flag before you bring that person into the practice?

"That's the first place to start. I mean, that's a really, really good place to start, right? Because the only way to stop embezzlement is to make sure it doesn't start, right? Because we know embezzlement is just such a gray area that's hard to catch. The easiest way to catch it is to call a former employer and get a reference for that person so that it never begins in your office in the first place.

Henry: "So I want to go back to this practice that we're talking about, and I'm really curious about something. So the doctor reaches out to you after seeing something on the refunds that definitely stood out. How do you all, if I'm not going give away too much here, how do you work behind the scenes with the doctor while the employee maybe doesn't know that something is going on to verify that something may be going on?

Askins: "In this particular case, we were fortunate in that the doctor knew it wasn't right. So once he found something odd on his merchant statement, he called her the next day, and he terminated her. But many, many of the cases that I have, the employee is still in the office. And in those particular cases, we take a copy of the software so that we're not intrusively getting in your software every day. We're not dealing with employees. We work strictly behind the scenes. We only speak to the practice owner. Occasionally, we'll speak to consultants when the doctor authorizes that. But we mainly work with the business owner only, and we take copies of everything so no one knows that we're there.

Henry: "So the termination obviously, that's a key piece of the puzzle because it ends right there. But we know so many practices it goes on for so long and had he not looked at that statement, had he not looked and seen the refunds, who knows how long it might have gone, correct?

Askins: "Yeah, absolutely. And this doctor was getting ready to go through the practice transition into retirement. So not only did she impact the previous owner, which was my client, she would have gone on to work for the new young doctor who's excited about building his practice. And she would have been in his office and God only knows how much she would have stolen from him.

Henry: "You know, I sense the excitement and the passion in your voice whenever we're talking about this. Is it just the fact that you're doing the right thing here and you're keeping people from doing the wrong thing? Is that what drives you personally?

Askins: "It does, it does. What I love the most about what we do at Prosperident or what I do as an examiner is I get to be a friend, a shoulder to lean on, a psychologist. I get to be an attorney sometimes, and I get to be a forensic auditor and to see justice for a wrong that was done, it just makes me excited. I love dentistry. I really, to my core, love dentistry. And it's an honor to be able to serve dental business owners in this manner.

Henry: So is one of the main messages, and I know there's so many things that dentists must do on a daily basis, but is it really having that handle on what exactly is going on in the practice? Just like this doctor, like you said, had he not sat down, had he not looked at that, it might still be going on.

Askins: It is absolutely. And, you know, a couple of lessons that we can take away from this as well is there's, you always have to make sure that the money your practice management system is telling you that you've collected, that it's actually being deposited. It's also important to remember that certain individuals that are very crafty and very skilled at embezzlement know exactly what the practice owner looks at and exactly what they don't look like. They know you better than you know yourselves. And this case is a perfect example of that. So she made the practice management system lie to him basically. And, you know, she did a lot of wire fraud in this particular case, which was also off the books. So there were some things that he could have seen and some things that he couldn't see. He didn't even know it was there.

Henry: And I just want to emphasize a point you just made because craftiness, you know, there's a skill level to doing this that I think we have to be aware actually exists, you know, just like with phone scammers, just like with anything else that we're kind of, we have our spidey senses up about, we have to with this as well, correct?

Askins: Absolutely, absolutely. And I get quite discouraged when I go on the dental boards and I see conversations about embezzlement or possible embezzlement in people's offices. And sometimes the retort is, this was your fault. You were negligent in allowing this to happen. Even though we have people in our offices that we dearly trust and we rely on, it never takes away the responsibility or the feeling that you have to verify transactions. You cannot just blanket trust someone. So trust, but verify.

Henry: And I love that because I've heard so often that somebody just turns things over to people because they're a good person. You trust them. You've worked with them for years. And while we want to be able to do that, we also know it's a little bit different world now maybe than it was, you know.

Askins: And that's what struck me so much about this case as well is that my client and his wife are, just precious, precious people. And we've been communicating about this case for years. And it's almost like this case really crushed their spirits. For them, I think the greatest hurt was not the financial loss, but it was an emotional loss for them because embezzlement is such a personal crime and it occurs day after day after day. But they're doing good. They were incredibly pleased with the sentencing, which was 41 months in a federal prison. What's a little bit different about this sentencing as well is that she has to serve a minimum of 36 months. So she can get out early for good behavior, but not that much earlier.

Henry: OK, well justice being served, a very good thing. Last question for you, Wendy. If somebody suspects something is going on in their practice, is the best thing they do to reach out to a professional like you, just like this doctor did, or to reach out to Prosperity, or what's the best cause of action? Because you and I have both seen, we go on social media and people are talking about it, or whatever it might be, and asking their colleagues first. What do you think?

Askins: Absolutely the best thing to do is to reach out to Prosperident, and you first speak with David Harris and express your concerns. And then we kind of go from there in determining what type of documentation we need from you and things like that. The thing that scared me honestly about this case is that from an overview level, the practice looked fine. I struggled with this case for seven months. It was unforgiving. And if you were trying to do this on your own, if you were a business owner trying to do this on your own, I am 100% confident that you wouldn't have uncovered it. And what's really sad is I have another case right now. So absolutely reach out to Prosperident and let the experts take a look at it.

Henry: What you just said is scary to be perfectly honest with you. It is, and I think that's a bell that should be going off for everyone who's listening or watching this is that it goes on behind the scenes and again sometimes no idea that it is. Wendy, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. I appreciate David Harris, a good friend, allowing this to happen and giving us a little scene behind the scenes for what Prosperity Inc. does to help their clients and to help dental practices bring those people justice. And it's a really cool thing.

Askins: Thanks for allowing me to share this story.

Henry: I'm just gonna say this. I hope to have you back next time that you catch, you know, those that you're working on right now. How about that? Well, that's great. We'd love to share it here on Dr B. So thank you again, Wendy. I appreciate it.

Askins: Yeah, always love to share good news. Thank you so much.

Henry: And thanks to all of you who listened to this episode. I hope you've learned some lessons here with this behind-the-scenes exclusive look at this case that went on in Texas and just how important it is. Check those references and always make sure that you're staying on top of your business. Until next time, it's Kevin Henry, editor in chief for DrBicuspid, signing off and as always, wishing you nothing but success ahead."

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